Why I don't want eSports to grow

I've been thinking about this subject for a long time and just wanted to let a few thoughts out, so this won't be a really structurized, well founded essay. Just take it for what it is and let me know your thoughts and criticisms. =)

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Every single wellknown community figure talks about growing eSports. During an average event we're asked to follow, tweet, like, tell our friends about a hundred times - a multiple of that number if Tasteless is at the event ;D - so that there are more and more viewers, to get more and more sponsors, to get more and more events and players funded etc.Accordingly the famous "you're hurting eSports" is only the short form of "you're hurting the growth of eSports". And how could anyone want that? Big prizepools and top-notch production values make the tournaments so much more enjoyable, and we tend to forget that not long ago it was nothing short of a miracle if a player could attend more than one international even per year.

Now don't get me wrong, I advertised eSports and more specifically Starcraft quite a bit. Turning latent semi-nerds into fulltime nerds cheering at players is great, because it's awesome to be able to share your hobby with friends, and it's cool to see your favorite game trending on twitter.

But looking at the scene now I come to think about every now and then that... this is enough. And I'm not talking about a new eSports bubble that some people are afraid about (maybe rightly so). It's just that I already see some negative implications of that growth. Maybe you could call it overcommercialization. I don't like the trend that teams value streaming as much as high tournament placements (as stated by NaNiwa). I don't like the trend that players are asked to choose PR-events over competetive events (as seen recently with iNcontroL - I have a lot of respect for that guy and I know there are rational arguments for that choice. If I'd been at PAX and able to play against him in the Kingston booth I probably would have enjoyed that EGs sponsors make that possible. But after all... I just don't like it.).

Now to the reason why I write this blog now. The following part is a) speculative and b) may sound elitist. I just want to point out in advance that generally speaking I want everyone to enjoy this hobby in his or her way.

I've played the shit out of starcraft over 14 years (which is the majority of my life... that sounds fucking weird :D) and I've been following the korean BW scene for many years as well. While I enjoy stuff like monobattles quite a bit and once in a while like to watch streams of players like Grubby, who besides having huge talent is not at the top right now, when it comes to big international tournaments I want to see the highest play possible. Which is why I can't even wrap my head around thread titles like "The Korean dominance in recent events. What to do?". It's just mind-boggling to me (hence my one-liner in that thread^^). For me it's just about the entertainment through quality of games, which in my opinion will always produce the best stories as well. I get the excitement of an underdog story, but that should be earned through upsetting results. Of course it's not like I want only Koreans in a tournament, that's the point. Players like Huk and IdrA (and more recently Scarlett <3 :D) are a worthy addition to any tournament.Now if somebody new to the game does not have the deep understanding of the game to value the biggest of big plays he has to clinch to something else to find who he wants to root for, and most of the time that is a story. In some cases that might be the eternal second fighting against his curse or the zerghero or whatever, but apparently more often than not it will simply be the one of his nationality or at least "the foreigner". I kind of get that when there are only "generic korean terrans" left, as I like to call them, with no (known) story behind them at all... but I hate it.Already GOM tries to force foreigners into the most prestigous tournament of the world, because they know that's where their biggest viewer numbers come from. What if those numbers are declining and a tournament like MLG has to think about denying Koreans entry into their competition (maybe fanfavorites like MC, MMA etc. aside)? That would be the moment where I'd turn away disgustedly and wish back the good old days and only watch GSL.

Additionally, I made one really unpleasent experience at gamescom last year, which I will post in spoilers as this is already a wall of text... sorry :p

On August 21 2011 06:39 chocopaw wrote:I was there today and enjoyed the good games. What I did not enjoy was the following. I'm not sure if the incident has been mentioned before.

If you watched the stream you probably saw how enthusiastically Socke was greeted by the fans. The crowd got heated up by Take even more.Don't get me wrong, while I wouldn't call myself a fan I have nothing against Socke, I enjoyed quite a few games of him. But as an anti-nationalist I don't see why I should root for him because of where he was born.When Puma entered the stage there were quite a few "boo"-shouters. I don't know if they did it because of the EG "scandal", because he is Korean or simply because he was Sockes opponent and they would have done it against anyone else.When I cheered for Puma after good actions by him, showcasing his superior play, I in fact earned angry reactions. Just because I was for the wrong player. Again, this might have been anti-EG, it might have been anti-Socke's opponent, but the point is, it doesn't really matter.

I don't know if the following was on the stream:In the commercial break between the second and third match Take entered the stage to announce that there had been attempts of glaring Puma with a laser pointer while the second match was going on. Take said that if they were continued they would send everyone away and let the players end the series backstage to assure the matches could be played under fair conditions. They actually had an IEM guy stand in front of Puma in the third match to prevent further incidents.

Now, while I am a political person, I usually try to not let that interfere with my hobby. If people have to root for a player because of his home country I let them have their fun, as long as they don't hop on the "No Koreans at MLG!"-bandwagon or shit like that. But today a line was crossed for me when I experienced hostility because I rooted for the "wrong" player. The laser pointer act might have been executed by a stupid troll, but it might as well have been a overzealous Socke fan.

My point is: I am disgusted by even the possibility of this being a trend in the esports community. What if that weren't just a few stupid individuals? I hope that every esports fan who witnesses behavious similar to what I described in this post distances him- or herself from it and feels ashamed if people not related to esports see them as representatives of our hobby and scene. Please do everything to keep esports positive, international and open to everybody, and first of all: keep it revolving around the fun!

tl;dr: I know money has to be made to keep this awesome hobby going, but maybe it's good to stand back once in a while and reflect on negative ramifications of the growth of eSports.

I think you are getting ahead of yourself. Right now Esports seems pretty big, but its really not in the grand scheme of things. While the Korean dominaince thing kinda sucks, I feel like Esports is becoming this global thing, so there are a lot of opertunity for non korean players to win big events. I don't see a reason as too why non koreans cant win big events, because I think they can.

Okay the only thing i want to point out is that : this isn't "esports" you seem ot be angry at, this is " WESTERN " esports. I'm pretty sure this shit has never happened in over a decade of brood war ( the laser pointer thing, people reacting like an angry mob because you're cheering for puma etc ... ).In the foreign scene, it's more important to have an image than talent and work hard. Take a look at destiny : he is one of the worst and most undeserving players of the scene, and gets so many viewers ( i'm not sure about that but didn't he even get a trip to korea ? ), the same applies to say incontrol. PR over competition. That's the foreign scene. I highly doubt MVP, nestea MKP etc etc etc would have gotten famous if it wasn't for their achievements.People in the foreign scene want to be entertained, they don't care about skill ( but hey, that's nothing new, they're watching SC not brood war ... jk jk )

On April 10 2012 23:06 Marti wrote:People in the foreign scene want to be entertained, they don't care about skill

Kinda unfair and untrue, personally I'll cheer for a particular player whose personality I like sure, but i do that equally for MKP as Grubby what really gets me going is huge skill. Watching IPL4 when something amazingly skillful happened I was awed. The thing was this was mainly done by the korean players (thats who was on the most) and frankly thats what I really enjoyed about the tournament. Sure some people are there to be entertained but don't generalize that fact because it isn't true.

I dont see the issue with you recieving negative emotions as feedback for cheering for "their" opposition. Instead that just shows people are emotionally invested. enjoy it. Perhaps if it continues events will start to do sections for different players/teams...Also I see no issues with the growth of esports. I don't think this that we have right now is the pinacle of sc2s potential as a sport. To me it seems silly to say "I dont want esport to grow because the influx of people will be noobs and they will not appreciate the game for the same reasons I do", hipster much? If you dont like uneducated noobs then educate them, if you cant do that, then at least learn to accept it, because everyone was a noob at some point, everyone, and no one deserves resentment for that fact.

If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind’s worst disease. - Sent-ts'an

Kinda retarded if you ask me but yeah, he is seriously talking about restricting the amount of koreans in international tournaments. And check out this post : + Show Spoiler +

On April 10 2012 18:04 naastyOne wrote:Hello everyone,

While I do understand that TL webforum is quite a "certain type of people" community, there is so ridiculous amound of not called upon fail i just wanted to get in.

First of all, sport is about the SHOW, not determining who has the longest dick. While skill is an integral part of the Show, more skill doesn`t necessary means better show. When about half of matches are predictably Korean terran MMM&drops, you might as well not watch half of the tournament. Simple as that, pick the "best"(the highest in position or whatever criterium) don`t waste time on the else. Obviously this is an example, but you get the drill.

Secondly 95% to 99% will not see the difference between the "code A" and "code S" doing same BO and style of play, while they can very vell notice different styles of play and different BOs. What does it means? Basically that there is no need for 90% of tournament to be super mega pro skilled players for it to be entertaining, on contray, such tournament is less predictable, and thurs more interesting.

That is the thing that is widely seen world-wide. The lesser leagues, i mean every friging european country has 2-3 leagues of football. Strangely, they have enough fans and money to live their life, despite the fact that uniting them into one "mega" league would result in overall "higher skill".

Could continue with other sports, but pretty much all sports have their lowest competitions at inter schools or inter-university levels, with kids/students playing in free of study time, so the argument holds perfectly.

Now, Look at SC2 itself. How many of the "skilled" players praise HD/day9/whoever, and dislike Husky(H to the usky husky). Guesswhat, Husky pretty much has larger auditory than all other english casters brought together. Ever thought why? Well, he manages to do the "show" part better, while casting same replays as others.

Ever wondered why the for example Football World Cup is much more noticeable and attended event than European Cup, despite the fact that Europeans dominate football, and a part from Argentina and Brazil, pretty much no national team can stand up? Despite the fact that a lot of European underdogs are probably better than some/most of teams from other than Europe/SA region.

So what does this means? It means in an order to survive and develop any sport needs a balance of local and international events, local and international teams, and most importantly content for broad spectre of dedication, and international events should be international, it should be serving to promote and advertise the sport apon broad community.

The problem may be not the IPL itself, but the fact that there is a lack of the local/non-korean tournaments, (while there are very plenty of korean dominated tournaments) and IPL was looking like the missing part, but it was just pretty much ended up as MLG, so largely failed to provide something different and unique.

Lastly, the ones about "they need to get better" got it upside down. When korea has community, which generates enough revenue to pay large enough number of pro-gamers for a living, In NA/EU, it does not exists, so foreign players can not really dedicate themselves to SC2, because they also have education and work which is not connected to SC2 and takes time from it.

Which again brings down the question of how to build up the international community, and "international tournaments"(coupled with local ones) are a great thing to do, bot only if the "domination of one nation" is impossible, otherwise the entire event serves only as another local competition for that country.

And the words of IPL4 manager pretty much confirms it, IPL4 failed on it`s purpose of an international tournament. Still interesting event, but largely irrelevant.

Also think about the fact that destiny gets thousands of viewers while being pretty much the worst foreign "progamer", think about how not so good incontrol is ...The only time i saw idra's and stephano's stream at the same time was around after the eswc and idra had 15k while stephano had 7k.

IT IS TRUE, most people don't care that much about who the best is, seriously compare the korean streams to the foreign ones right now the " incredible miracle " stream has 500 viewers while TLO has 5 k.Losira ? 1K , Do you seriously want to make me belive that TLO is better than losira ?Dragon ? 2k, because he entertains, the last time i tuned in to his stream he was doing random stuff on someone else's NA platinium account, like lifting off at the start etc ... also remember the katu incident ? Katu just stated that dragon was a known streamcheater and all of a sudden dragon's fan show up, the angry mob of the internet defending their hero ...

Maybe it's not true for you but i am convinced it is for the majority of the viewers. The majority of video game players are casual, you wanna sell your game ? Make it noob friendly ( COD anyone ? ). The majority of the foreign sc2 viewers want to support their favourite player, as soon as he's out they are not that interested...

Then you have a minority of people who just want to see the best games ( understand : games played by the skilled / talented players ) and those viewers are willing to pay 20 bucks to MLG, those viewers are willing to pay gomTV to watch the gsl and the gstl but the majority is not that dedicated.

Dragon ? 2k, because he entertains, the last time i tuned in to his stream he was doing random stuff on someone else's NA platinium account, like lifting off at the start etc ... also remember the katu incident ? Katu just stated that dragon was a known streamcheater and all of a sudden dragon's fan show up, the angry mob of the internet defending their hero ...

was.

but enough of that.

The e-Sports community (More specifically the SC2 community) are starting to get the worst of both worlds. If anyone knows college sports, then they know how dedicated basketball and football fans are to their favorite teams. The sc2 community can bring in crowds just as easily as any college sport, but the crowds are not active at all and the few people that are act like they are doing cocaine and cant sit still for 2 minutes. It would be nice to go to an event that had a decent amount of people there that actually had some enthusiasm but as of right now, all we are bringing in are the "golf crowds" with their occasional

"Woot! *Clap *clap *clap"

and thats just sad. We cant say its because the game is young because REGARDLESS of how long ago SC2 came out, SC has been around for a decade and a half (close enough) so it should be nothing new.